


the prettiest boy in hollywood

by winterfold



Category: Pod Save America (RPF)
Genre: LA era, M/M, Pining, White House Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 19:25:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10928439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterfold/pseuds/winterfold
Summary: Tommy says, “I like the way you look.”Jon’s brain goes blank for a moment. “Wow,” he says. “You have no fucking taste.”





	the prettiest boy in hollywood

Looks are not Jon’s strong point.

And, you know, he got over it a long time ago— he has eyes, he can see as well as anyone else. He was short and funny-looking when he was thirteen and slowly figuring out he liked boys more than girls, and he’s still short and funny-looking and skips the gym more days than not. It’s fine, he’s got other talents. He joked his way to one job and another and then into the fucking White House. People don’t pay to look at him but they’ll sure as hell pay to listen to words that he wrote.

Still, the first time Jon meets Tommy Vietor, he's struck by the sheer injustice of the situation.

Good-looking people are dime-a-dozen in this White House, right— the President and First Lady, to start, and working down to the guy who’s technically his boss and whose gap-toothed grin is still infuriatingly attractive for some reason. But people like that tend to know they’re beautiful, and move like it. It kind of makes Jon hate them a little, but Jon’s pretty sure if he looked like them he’d do it, too. It’s just the way people are.

Tommy is like a parody of every WASP joke Jon has ever made: he looks like he’d burn outside on a cloudy day, he’s got a rotating stable of buttondown shirts and pants that span the exciting color spectrum of tan-to-dark, and five times out of seven he’s the one telling you earnestly that Massachusetts is a commonwealth, not a state. For fuck’s sake. It’s not the United Commonwealths of America.

Tommy is also one of the most attractive people Jon has met, and he has _no fucking idea_.

“Do people not tell him?” he asks Favs one time. They’re working late and Jon doesn’t remember exactly how _economic policy_ turned into _Tommy fucking Vietor_. A lot of Jon’s conversations lately have been ending up here. “I looked him up and down— how tall is he, anyway, it’s ridiculous— and he turned like, the actual color of a tomato. When you’re that good-looking, it’s not a big secret, come _on_.”

Jon’s out in this White House— as out as anyone can be in the political climate— because it’s easier to tell people up front and deal with it than wait until you maybe like each other. So Favs only says, “He’s only a couple inches taller than me,” frowning down at his draft, and adds, “I think people get scared off when he starts talking.”

“ _Tommy?_ ” Jon says incredulously. “He is literally the least scary person I’ve ever met. What the hell does he talk about?”

Favs shrugs. “I don’t know. Like, the gross domestic product of the Netherlands.”

Right. Because Tommy is also a giant fucking nerd.

“So are _you_ gonna tell him?” Favs asks. “Since you’re so invested. Put it in the middle of the speech. The people of Italy won’t appreciate it, but the President might find it kind of funny.”

“Fuck off,” Jon says, “no one’ll listen to that, it’s gotta be a France-sized speech, at least,” and goes back to writing. He lets himself worry only a little about the fact that he might, actually, let Tommy talk to him about the GDP of the Netherlands, and anything else he wants.

———

A couple weeks after Tommy breaks off his engagement, he moves in with Jon, and Jon finds himself in a heretofore unrealized level of hell.

Tommy is sad— well, _obviously_ — but he’s also a good Puritan boy allergic to feelings. So he just goes around like a sad Gothic heroine, with the pale face and dark eyes and quiet, repressed suffering, which is a) terrible, b) weirdly hot, and c) _terrible_.

Sometimes, Jon goes to bed with Tommy still sitting up on the sofa, haloed by the lamplight like some kind of Renaissance painting; sometimes, Jon wakes up and finds Tommy coming out of the bathroom, smelling of toothpaste and cologne and doing up the second-to-last button of his shirt. He’s not sure he’s actually ever seen Tommy sleep.

Sometimes, Jon jerks off in the shower thinking about the width of Tommy’s shoulders, about running his hand down the muscle of his forearm, about Tommy’s body draped across his back as he fucks into him. Then he presses his forehead to the wall of the shower as everything swirls down the drain, and tries not to think too much about the guilt that comes after.

He’s jerked off to a lot of straight guys. It’s not like Tommy’s any different.

Jon loses it maybe a month in, and it only takes that long because he’s been trying not to look Tommy in the eyes.

He wakes up at like, four in the morning, decides to take a leak and wanders over to the bathroom on autopilot, so he’s totally unprepared to run into an incredibly solid chest.

“What the fuck,” he yelps.

“Sorry,” comes Tommy’s voice. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were—”

Jon looks up to see Tommy’s face, full of shadows and angles from the light flooding out of the bathroom, and his filter’s never been great at the best of times, let alone when he’s barely awake.

“Why are you so _tall_ ,” he says.

“...Sorry?”

“ _Really_ tall,” Jon says, reaching up to one of Tommy’s shoulders for emphasis, “and stupidly handsome, and unbelievably smart, and I know most of that is like, genetics, but I mean, come on.”

Tommy looks down at Jon’s hand; he doesn’t move anything. “Lovett—”

Jon should be making a joke. Jon should pretend he never said anything. Jon should stop fucking talking because it doesn’t matter, but when’s he ever been able to stop talking?

“I’m just saying, I don’t have any of that, so will you stop wasting away, it’s infuriating.”

He pushes past Tommy into the bathroom and closes the door. He takes a piss. He washes his hands. When he comes back out, Tommy’s bedroom door is closed.

In the morning, Tommy says in a quiet voice, “You know you’re brilliant.”

Jon’s got coffee this time, and pants on. That makes it easy to square up his shoulders and say, “Of course I know.”

———

Here’s what happens: Jon quits his job.

"L.A.,” Tommy says.

“I’m sick of real politics,” Jon says, staring into the cabinet. They have too many fucking mugs. The only one he knows for sure is not his is the Hillary one, because he’d given it to Tommy as a joke. “Gonna write about fake politics instead.”

“Coming soon to a TV near me, I guess.”

“That’s the idea,” Jon says. “Listen, you have to help me pack.”

“Sure,” Tommy says, because he’s a Boy Scout through and through. “You want me to take the living room, or like—”

“I mean,” Jon says, “you have to help me pack because I have no idea which stuff out here is mine.”

“Oh,” Tommy says. “I—okay.” He picks out a mug, puts it back again. “When are you leaving?”

“Couple weeks.” Jon shrugs, and then, “What?” because Tommy’s staring at him with a wounded sort of look. He’s pretty sure people should only look like that in Shakespearean tragedies.

“I didn’t know you were that unhappy.”

“I mean,” Jon sighs. “Whatever. It’s nothing new. Pick the losing side. Burn out on the job. Just gotta pick up and try my luck elsewhere. Hollywood’s good for that, right?”

“Very Manifest Destiny. Go West, and all that.”

Jon snorts, because Tommy’s sounding more normal now but that doesn’t mean impromptu history should be _encouraged_. “A little more modern than the 1850s,” he says. “I can’t pull off the hats.”

Over two weeks, they somehow manage to unwind the tangles of Jon’s life from everyone else’s and shut it up into boxes. He says good-bye around the White House. The President of the United States shakes his hand and wishes him luck. If real life were a story, a _good_ story, that should be a sign. Or the lull before things go wrong. Jon’s not sure, which obviously bodes well for a successful writing career.

And then he’s got a crappy apartment rented and all his boxes shipped out, and he walks out the D.C. apartment for the last time.

Tommy hovers at the door, with that kicked puppy look again. “Tommy,” Jon says, “I’m not moving to the _moon_. They still have the internet in California.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tommy laughs, shaky. “You can Skype, tell me about all the parties you’re going to with movie stars.” And then he steps forward, pulls Jon into a hug. 

Jon lets himself press his face into Tommy’s shoulder for a minute, just long enough to take in how warm and solid he feels, the way he smells. Then he pulls away.

“One good thing about moving,” he tells Tommy, “not gonna have your ridiculous face around making me feel bad about myself.”

Tommy laughs. “I’m sure there’ll be lots of better looking people out there.”

“Naw,” Jon says. “Nobody’s prettier than you.”

It’s a joke, and it isn’t. Jon grins at Tommy, and then goes downstairs and takes a cab.

———

It’s weird when Tommy moves to San Francisco, and even weirder when they start doing the podcast with Favs. For one thing, they’re in the same timezone again. For another, it means they occasionally see each other in person.

Jon’s not in love with Tommy, because that would be stupid, and he learned not to pine over straight guys his first year of college. He goes out with guys from Grindr, fucks them in club bathrooms and their bedrooms, if they invite him over. He doesn’t see anyone twice. He says, “I’m a busy guy,” when Emily or Favs asks him if he’s dating anyone. “Building up a cult of personality, you know. Takes up a lot of time.”

Tommy never asks him. Jon doesn’t ask if Tommy's seeing anyone, either.

He sees Tommy in the flesh for the first time in years at LAX, and it’s strange, like Tommy’s a slightly blurred version of what he remembers. He looks more tired. His hair’s a little different. The Californian weather has, wonder of wonders, left him faintly browner, but when he shifts Jon can see the paler skin underneath his collar.

“Hey,” Tommy says, shaking himself out from the flight. “How’ve you been?”

“I—” Jon says, rubbing his face, “this fucking election,” and Tommy says “Yeah,” and “I know,” and “Somewhere in D.C., Plouffe is rolling his eyes right now and he doesn’t know why.”

“Actually, he probably knows exactly why,” Jon says, and watches Tommy’s face crack into laughter.

As the election season drags on, Jon breaks down like he always does, which is to say, loudly, hysterically, and angrily. “You gotta get off Twitter,” says Favs, and Tommy, and sometimes both of them at once. “We’re all blocked by the presidential nominee of a major political party, anyway.”

“I’ll do it when you do,” Jon says. “Actually, I’ll do it when he does, or when Twitter like, bans him for spreading hatespeech. They did it to Yiannopoulos, they can do it to him. Or was it take away the tick? That'd piss him off. Maybe he’ll get so mad he’ll have a heart attack.”

Twitter does not take away his tick. The polls tighten. They take turns texting _What Would Plouffe Say_ to each other in the mornings, and laugh too hard at jokes on the pod in the afternoons.

Jon can see the way Favs wears down, slow and grinding, but he’s not seeing Tommy every day. Grainy Skype doesn’t do nearly enough to transmit the way Tommy goes pale and stretched thin from stress. Sometimes, Jon worries he’s going translucent, is gonna fade away completely.

“Sorry,” Tommy says once when Jon says it out loud, too caffeinated and sleep-deprived to put a check on his words. “Not the prettiest boy in Hollywood anymore, huh.”

“Still holding on,” Jon says, barely aware of what he’s saying. “But you gotta take your vitamins, or you might lose the #1 spot.”

He’s not gonna win the election, they say to each other, until it becomes almost a prayer. Donate. Canvass. Turn out. He’s not gonna win the election.

He’s not gonna—

———

It starts as a joke. 

“Liberal bias,” Jon says. “We should just own it. It wouldn’t even be hard. ‘The truth: only in a liberal way.’”

“Isn’t that John Oliver’s job?” says Favs. “Now there’s a tagline. John Oliver, but less British.”

“The Crooked Media. Fox News of the left.”

“We should do it,” Tommy says.

They both look at him. “I was kidding,” Jon says. “You wanna start up a cable channel?”

“No, just—liberal media. Maybe it’ll still be podcasts. But the right has a way to disseminate information, to tell people what to do. Why not us?”

“People are pretty angry,” Favs says slowly.

They all look at each other. There’s something here, Jon can almost feel it; the quiet in the air before the lightning and thunder.

“I can’t call every rep in Congress,” he says. “Millions of listeners, though...”

“Little optimistic,” Favs says. “We gotta build this thing first.”

“Shut up, this is realism,” Jon says. “She won the fucking popular vote. The energy’s all there. But we gotta harness it before it all flames out.”

Tommy, unexpectedly, bursts into laughter. “Sorry,” he says. “Just— _it’s realism, not optimism_.”

It breaks the tension in the room, and then they’re all laughing. It takes them a long time to catch their breaths.

Well, it’s been a while since they’ve had anything to laugh about. Laughter is hope. It’s what lets people go on.

Tommy’s in L.A. for a solid two months, while they work on Crooked Media in some kind of fever. They live around their laptops, sleep four hours and work sixteen. It’s like working on a campaign, the same urgent energy, except they’re all older and more tired, right down to the bones.

One night Jon wakes up from where he’d wedged a sleeping bag between the sofa and coffee table, and finds Tommy stretched out on the sofa above him. He’s frowning faintly, even in sleep; one of his arms has slipped off the cushions, and Jon can see clearly the loose curl of his fingers, the pale skin on the inside of his wrist lit up by moonlight.

He reaches for it without knowing exactly what he’s doing. Donald fucking Trump is president and the world is on fire, but the way the bones of Tommy’s wrist feel under his hand is true. Solid.

“Lovett?” Tommy says, raspy, and Jon jerks back, bangs his head on a coffee table leg.

“Fuck,” he says, “sorry, I just—”

He feels coiled tight to breaking point, every part of him vibrating. If Tommy asks— if Tommy says, “you just—” and tips his head in a question, Jon’s pretty sure his insides are gonna come spilling out.

“Sorry,” Tommy says instead, contrite. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Tommy shouldn’t be apologizing. Tommy should tell Jon to fuck off.

“Intent doesn’t mean shit,” Jon says instead. Some old, half-forgotten campaign mantra. “It’s what you do that matters.”

“Right.” Tommy sighs, a long, quiet sound. “Go to sleep, Lovett.”

Jon wants to touch Tommy. Jon wants Tommy to touch him.

Jon wants—

———

Sometimes, they do live shows. Sometimes, Tommy swings by L.A. and they all record in the studio.

It’s not enough. Jon’s gotten used to Tommy being here. All the work he did trying to unstitch himself from Tommy, because the sheer idea is absurd, and he’s fallen back to old patterns like an addict.

And all the while, Crooked Media grows up.

Tommy starts _Pod Save the World_. It’s detailed and complicated and everything that Tommy loves. He talks to experts about policy and asks thoughtful questions. Jon’s not a policy guy, but it comes to him easier when it’s in Tommy’s voice.

The GDP of the Netherlands. It’s close enough.

 _Lovett or Leave It_ comes later.

“I feel like I should have a show,” Jon's saying over Skype, “but like, what’s the hook, right? What’s the content? You and Favs do the content, I just make the jokes.”

“That could be content,” Tommy says. “News in an entertaining, digestible way? People need that.”

Tommy’s looking at him, but Jon doesn’t know what he wants. The video quality is crap, anyway. He keeps telling Tommy to move down here. Tommy keeps telling him to find him a house, first.

“If we book comedians,” Jon says eventually. “Yell at Paul fucking Ryan for an hour. A _Where in the World is Marco Rubio_ segment.”

Tommy cracks a smile. “See,” he says, “I’d listen to that.”

———

When Jon comes back from the live show in Dallas, Tommy’s sitting on his front step.

“Are we recording something?” Jon says, letting himself into the house and waving Tommy in. He’s gotta pick up Pundit from Favs at some point. “I thought you were crashing in San Francisco for a while.”

Tommy’s eyes are large and bright. Jon can’t look at them, can’t look away from them. “You keep saying,” Tommy says, slowly, “things about me.”

“I say all kinds of shit about you,” Jon points out. “Did you fly down here to beat me up or something, ‘cause first, we’re not in junior high anymore, and anyway that’s a lot of effort—”

“You told a live audience that I’m too handsome to stand next to.”

Jon laughs. There are feelings and there are facts; it’s only sometimes one gets in the way of the other. “I mean.” He waves a hand at Tommy. “Straight shooter, respected on both sides. Calling it like I see it.”

Tommy takes a step forward. “I like the way you look.”

Jon’s brain goes blank for a moment. “Wow,” he says. “You have no fucking taste.”

Tommy’s crowding him into the wall by the door. No one needs to be that tall, or have shoulders that broad. “Don’t I.”

“I’m way too short,” Jon says. He has to tilt his head way up to look at Tommy’s face, so that’s a case in point. “And proportioned kind of weird. And I have like, this face? It’s kind of relatable, kind of friendly, but it’s not like a, wow, I’d like to save that in a museum kind of face.”

"But I like it,” Tommy says, stubbornly. “Lovett—”

"You came down here,” Jon says, voice rising, “because you listened to my podcast, and I said you were too handsome, and you had to disagree? In person? Did all of NorCal lose _texting_?”

“I came down,” Tommy says, “to do something.” The line of his throat is trembling.

 _Intent doesn’t mean shit_ , Jon thinks as Tommy leans down. Slowly, like he’s trying not to scare Jon off, or give him a chance to stop. But Jon doesn’t move, staring up at a part of a cheek, the bridge of his nose, the pale fan of his eyelashes— all the parts that make up Tommy’s familiar face— watches it come closer until it all blurs into one thing, and that’s Tommy, kissing him.

“ _That’s_ what you came here to do,” Jon says against Tommy’s mouth. “You are unbelievable.” He doesn’t pull away. “Was it, uh— worth it, I hope.”

He’s pretty sure he can feel Tommy smile. “Yeah,” he says. “Think it is.”

Tommy is a fucking moron, and Jon is screwed because that only makes feel more fond. “A house,” he blurts out. His hands are curling themselves around Tommy’s shoulders.

“What?”

Into the goddamn fire, Jon Lovett. “You said you’d move down here if I found you a house.” Jon looks around him, at the house that’s kind of a disaster, but his nonetheless. “I mean, it’s messy and it’s got a dog and a guy living in it already, but like. You didn’t give me specifics.”

Tommy laughs, stroking a thumb down the line of Jon’s jaw. “I like the dog,” he says thoughtfully. “And I could get used to the guy.”

**Author's Note:**

> Very fake news, keep things chill, etc. I melt down about podcasts @undeployed on tumblr.


End file.
